1. Field
Embodiments relate to processors. In particular, embodiments relate to processors to scale floating point numbers responsive to floating point scaling instructions.
2. Background Information
Floating point numbers are commonly used in processors, computer systems, and other electronic devices. One advantage of floating point numbers is that they allow a wide range of numerical values to be represented in a relatively compact numerical format and/or number of bits.
A number of different floating point formats are known in the art. The floating point format typically apportions the bits used to represent the floating point number into several constituent fields known as the sign, the significand, and the exponent of the floating point number.
Various machine instructions are known in the art for processing floating point numbers. For example, machine instructions are known in the art for converting between floating point and integer values.